G-8 VOWS END TO `DIGITAL DIVIDE' BETWEEN RICH, POOR

The Group of Eight world leaders moved Saturday toward marshaling help for poor nations lagging behind in the new information-driven global economy while pushing into the background some old economic and trade problems that could dim prosperity's warm glow.

In the windup to their annual summit on Sunday, President Clinton and his counterparts aimed their political clout at addressing the problems of developing countries in closing the "digital divide" between rich and poor populations, improving health and education services, and fighting AIDS.

Their new focus responded to concerns expressed during violent outbreaks on the streets of Seattle last year that they, as world leaders, were ignoring the impact of their trade and economic policies on people. It was a sign that Seattle had sensitized the leaders to the relentless efficiencies of globalization that often can leave developing countries in the dust.

The G-8 proposed to free up new dollars for these nations by pushing much more aggressively a debt relief plan adopted a year ago. And the G-8 leaders joined with the private sector in proposals to push more computer equipment and the information economy into the developing world.

Some of this was driven strictly by commercial considerations.

Japan, for example, has announced a $15 billion plan in which its high-tech companies would spread information technology throughout the developing world. The U.S. is tapping its own firms, including Cisco Systems, to do their part in closing the "digital divide," a White House official said.

But as they ventured more extensively into the issues of a post-Seattle world, the leaders caught some criticism for failing to confront their old disputes over trade and the fact that world prosperity is still highly uneven.

Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, said the U.S. has become the linchpin of the global economy by becoming the "net buyer in the world. This whole thing is unsustainable. Somehow the world is going to have to figure out how to grow without depending overwhelmingly on the U.S."

America's voracious appetite for foreign goods and money has turned into the global economy's main engine. Without it, noted the International Monetary Fund, the world might not have recovered so quickly from the 1997-98 "Asian contagion."

The U.S. trade deficit last month reached another record as the reliance on foreign goods continued unabated.

U.S. purchasing power has fired the global economy for years, yet Japan languishes close to recession while Europe lags far behind the U.S. in creating new jobs. Third World nations build their economies around successful export to the U.S.

Even the International Monetary Fund expressed concerns earlier this month about the sustainability of a world economy that banks so heavily on America.

In a report, it said the U.S. needs to make sure its appetite for goods and services does not trigger inflation and bring down the stock market.

Such concerns did not seem to bother the leaders in their public comments.

In a statement on Friday, the G-8 heads of state said their economies had moved toward a "more balanced and therefore more sustainable pattern of growth" in the past year.

Yet behind the scenes there was concern about the impact of rising U.S. interest rates on the global economy and whether Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan can engineer a slowdown that tames inflation without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.

Other economic analysts said the leaders fell short in tackling the long-standing dispute over agricultural subsidies that has resulted in a miniature trade war between the U.S. and Europe.

The U.S. is currently retaliating against the European Union with higher tariffs on goods that orginated in a trade dispute over bananas. The U.S. is also smarting over the fact that Europe will not allow U.S. exports of genetically engineered food products.

While the leaders once again have declared a need to settle such disputes by launching another round of trade talks, they did not back up their words with a political will to do so.

More than any leader, Clinton seemed disinclined to plunge into deeper conflict with Europe and Japan with only a few months left in his presidency.

In a well-received speech upon his arrival here, he declared that America intended to reduce its military footprint on Okinawa by pushing ahead with a consolidation of bases. He also held a private meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

But Clinton was preoccupied with the Mideast peace talks awaiting him at Camp David, Md. He planned an early departure from the summit Sunday.

The other leaders wished him well in his Middle East summitry and committed themselves to "assist in the implementation of a peace agreement" between Israel and the Palestinians.

Still, Clinton left his mark on the summit's outcome. His administration, responding to the Seattle violence, had engineered the agenda for this summit and its emphasis on reducing poverty and disease and improving education and computer skills in the Third World.

The other leaders bought into his premise that there should be more deregulation of information technology around the world as a way to help close the digital divide, although this administration idea lacked specificity or any kind of program to carry it out.

All too often these summits are criticized for the emphasis on empty words and a shortage of concrete proposals. On dealing with the complex issue of globalization's impact on people, Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington, said: "I think they ought to be a lot more specific, a lot more proactive. They tend to be long on rhetoric, very short on action."

The most potent idea emerging from the summit may be the leaders' declared intention actually to carry out a policy announced a year ago--to push for more debt relief for developing countries.

The White House's theme is that too many of these countries have invested in bricks-and-mortar projects over the years that have driven them into deeper debt and left them helpless to improve the education of their people, to deal with diseases such as AIDS, to make computer technology more widely available to impoverished populations.

The leaders conceded that their debt relief strategy, announced a year ago, had gotten off to a slow start. Only three countries, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique, have been approved for debt forgiveness, with another six getting close.